by Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY

by Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY

The new Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet is the first to arrive since 1986, but Shakespeare's star-crossed lovers have never really left us. There have been countless stagings and adaptations in all media; filmmakers from George Cukor to Baz Luhrmann and musicians from Gounod to Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sondheim to Taylor Swift have drawn inspiration from the classic tale of young romance doomed by older, colder hearts.

This fall actually brings a trio of high-profile new Romeos. On Sept, 27, just eight nights after David Leveaux's aforementioned revival opens Classic Stage Company will begin previews of an off-Broadway production, starring Julian Chi and Elizabeth Olsen in the title roles and set to open Oct. 16. And a new film version by Italian director Carlo Carlei, Romeo & Juliet, with a screenplay byJulian Fellowes, hits screens Oct. 11.

Fellowes, whose credits include Downton Abbey and Gosford Park, says that producer Ileen Maisel "came to me with the proposition that today's young generation had not been given their own Romeo and Juliet -- certainly not in the romantic, medieval setting used by Franco Zeffirelli," whose 1968 movie adaptation is a favorite.

Carlei and Fellowes stayed true to the lushness and period authenticity of that vision, down to casting a very young actress as Juliet; leading lady Hailee Steinfeld was only 15 when filming started. ("I had just read Romeo and Juliet in school," Steinfeld admits.)

CSC's Romeo & Juliet, in contrast, isn't set in medieval Verona, or anywhere in particular. "We have chairs and tables on stage, and our clothes are modern but formal," says director Tea Alagic. Alagic, 40, fled Bosnia-Herzegovina when she was 19; and a broader view of "gangs and civil war, and property" informs her take on the feud between the Montagues, who are presented as an old-money clan, and the Capulets, portrayed as nouveau-riche.

But despite the difference in their technical approaches, Alagic and the artists behind the new screen Romeo offer similar theories to Romeo and Juliet's enduring popularity and resonance.

"I think this is a play about older generations leaving a messy world for younger generations," Alagic says. "You find that everywhere, in America and all over the world. Young people end up with no hope, and they continue the fighting without knowing why."

Carlei agrees that "the story is about intolerance, and about the conflict between the world of adults, which is practical, and the world of kids, who are dreamers, and don't care about what's convenient."

For Fellowes, Romeo and Juliet is also "one of the few classics where a great writer was interested in encapsulating that very first moment of young love -- the moment when you think that you'll never have a problem again in your life, as long as she kisses you. I hope that teenagers will find that in our film, and cry into a bucket of Kleenex."